Supreme Court halts Dem effort to redraw New York congressional seat

The Supreme Court has agreed to freeze a Democratic effort to redraw New York GOP Rep. Nicole Malliotakis’ district before this year’s midterms.

In a ruling issued Monday evening, the justices appeared to divide, 6-3, along ideological lines as they halted the Democratic attempt to make Malliotakis’ district more competitive. Republicans argued that the change, which was billed as an attempt to empower minority voters, ran afoul of restrictions on race-based redistricting.

The decision appears likely to remain in effect through this year’s election cycle, leaving unchanged the boundaries of the only GOP-held district in New York City.

The high court’s intervention triggered a bitter dissent from the liberal justices, who accused the conservative majority of abandoning the court’s usual practice of not interfering in state election processes as filing deadlines near. New York’s filing deadline is April 6.

“Time and again, this Court has said that federal courts should not interfere with state-court litigation. Time and again, this Court has said that federal courts should not meddle with state election laws ahead of an election,” Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in a dissent joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “Today, the Court says: except for this one, except for this one, and except for this one.”

Justice Samuel Alito was the only member of the majority to offer a public rationale for the stay. He said it was necessary to fend off flagrantly unconstitutional use of race in the bid to redraw the boundaries.

The case the justices addressed Monday differed from ones the high court wrestled with in recent months involving Texas and California, where the issues involved gerrymanders designed to increase a party’s power. The Supreme Court turned aside Democrats’ bid to block the GOP-led redistricting in Texas and the Republicans’ bid to block the Democrat-led redraw in California.

But the New York challenge was explicitly about racial redistricting, a subject that the court has scrutinized more skeptically. A Democratic state trial court judge concluded in January that the makeup of the Malliotakis seat ran afoul of the state constitution because the candidates favored by Black and Hispanic voters rarely won.

Malliotakis’ district combines Staten Island with a moderate corner of Brooklyn. A new map hadn’t been drawn, but could have involved merging the island with Lower Manhattan. That would have turned a safe GOP seat to a battleground district.

New York Democrats have spent the past year hoping to engage in the national redistricting wars, but have been hindered by state constitutional language that prohibits mid-decade changes to the maps without a court order.

"The case was a disgrace,” New York GOP Chair Ed Cox said. “This blatantly political case violated both the New York State and federal constitutions and, as Justice Alito stated, the lower court's decision was a full-blown racial gerrymander.”

The decision helps clarify the fields for this year’s elections. Former New York City Comptroller Brad Lander has launched a primary challenge against Rep. Dan Goldman in a Manhattan and Brooklyn district. But if the maps had been rejiggered, it was widely expected that Goldman would have shifted seats to challenge Malliotakis.